Veracel: the wait is over.Editor's Note Editor's Note (foaled in 1993 in Kentucky) is an American thoroughbred Stallion racehorse. He was sired by 1992 U.S. Champion 2 YO Colt Forty Niner, who in turn was a son of Champion sire Mr. Prospector and out of the mare, Beware Of The Cat. Trained by D. : This article was originally published in O Papel magazine. Taking advantage of favorable fa·vor·a·ble adj. 1. Advantageous; helpful: favorable winds. 2. Encouraging; propitious: a favorable diagnosis. 3. market conditions, Aracruz and Stora Enso
 'kəlĭp`təs): see myrtle. eucalyptus pulp line in the world. Its 900,000 metric tons/year of production will increase Brazil's output of eucalyptus pulp by 10%. The municipality MUNICIPALITY. The body of officers, taken collectively, belonging to a city, who are appointed to manage its affairs and defend its interests. of Eunapolis, in the Brazilian state of Bahia, even today bears the imprints of the arrival of progress. In the past, the Atlantic Forest The Atlantic Forest (Mata Atlântica in Portuguese) is a region of tropical and subtropical moist forest, tropical dry forest, tropical savannas, and mangrove forests which extends along the Atlantic coast of Brazil from Rio Grande do Norte state in the north to Rio Grande had largely been eliminated and replaced by pasture pasture, land used for grazing livestock. Land unsuited for cultivation, e.g., hilly or stony land, may be used as pasture. Tilled land and meadow may be pastured after the crops are removed. , and the entire region had become a large ranch. It was in this region, far removed from large urban centers, that Aracruz and Stora Enso decided to build Veracel. The mill required an investment of US$ 1.25 billion (US$ 850 million spent inside the mill) and is designed for annual production of 900,000 metric tons/yr of eucalyptus pulp. "When they told me about the project and when I saw the schedule and all the other details, I thought: 'It looks impossible, but lets see what happens.' I admit that I was a bit skeptical, and thought it was very optimistic--on a completely new site, in a region with no infrastructure, with no industrial tradition, nothing," said Veracel President Vitor Costa. The apparently unfavorable context for the project proved no obstacle to its success. "The market situation was very favorable--all the suppliers' factories were practically empty, with few orders. They could devote all their efforts to the Veracel project," said Costa. [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] He knew that the project would go well because it could draw on the experience of two leading names: Aracruz and Stora Enso. "Much of the same team participated in the construction of Aracruz Line C, and knowing what worked and didn't work in that project, they were able to apply their knowledge to Veracel," said Costa. Despite the cultural differences, the staff of Veracel's partner companies had little trouble doing their jobs. "The integration was easy, with considerable synergy The enhanced result of two or more people, groups or organizations working together. In other words, one and one equals three! It comes from the Greek "synergia," which means joint work and cooperative action. of knowledge and capacity to carry out projects. I think that there will be a very significant interaction also in the operational phase of the company, in strategies both for production and for product utilization and improvement," said Renato Gueron, project director for Veracel. Located in Eunapolis, Bahia, Veracel was officially inaugurated in September, but production of pulp started in May. CONSTRUCTION SITE Construction of the Veracel plant mobilized 12,000 people and 200 companies from all over the country and the world. The selected site-1.2 million square meters-had almost no infrastructure when work began in May 2003. The first task was to build access roads to the site, as well as provide water and electricity so workers and machines could get to work. "The shipments that arrived-by road, water and air-were huge and very heavy," said Gueron. All told, about 5700 trucks and trailers came to the site, with more than 1000 arriving in some months. [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Thought also went into accommodations and food for the workers. "We tried to provide a better standard of quality than these people are normally accustomed to, and this created a relative calm during most of the construction of the mill," added Veracel President Vitor Costa. At the end of the construction, Veracel donated the housing units to the community, allowing the municipalities to use them as schools, medical clinics, etc. SUPPLIER INVASION With the issue of infrastructure resolved, the partners in Veracel-Aracruz and Stora Enso-started the construction phase of the mill, which would take up an area of more than 250,000 square meters Noun 1. square meter - a centare is 1/100th of an are centare, square metre area unit, square measure - a system of units used to measure areas . Veracel chose the engineering, procurement and construction  The introduction to this article is vague. To comply with Wikipedia's guidelines, it should be improved. (EPC (1) (Entertainment PC) See HTPC.(2) (Electronic Product Code) A standard code for RFID tags administered by EPCglobal Inc. (www.epcglobalinc.org). ) system, the same as used in Aracruz Fiberline C (between 2000 and 2002). The method has already been used in some plants in the United States United States, officially United States of America, republic (2005 est. pop. 295,734,000), 3,539,227 sq mi (9,166,598 sq km), North America. The United States is the world's third largest country in population and the fourth largest country in area. (while not being as common in Europe) and in other types of industries, such as steel manufacturing. "It is a model where the supplier has the greatest responsibility--it develops and executes all the conceptual engineering, basic engineering, and detailed engineering. It contracts for construction and assembly, supplies all the equipment and materials, carries out the final commissioning, and trains the operating personnel for plant startup. All this with the guarantee of achieving the agreed capacity," explained Gueron, who added that Veracel's team played an ongoing role. "We do all the monitoring until the commissioning stage, whereupon where·up·on conj. 1. On which. 2. In close consequence of which: The instructor entered the room, whereupon we got to our feet. the supplier leaves and Veracel takes over." [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] For the Veracel project, 15 EPC suppliers were hired. The task of interconnecting all these packages, ensuring their connections, pipes, cabling, controls, etc., was the responsibility of Jaakko Poyry, which was also responsible for all the engineering consulting. DAY-TO-DAY CONSTRUCTION WORK The starting gun for the immense Veracel project was fired on July 4, 2003, when purchase orders were issued by the suppliers. "We had a total schedule of 22 months, but in some sectors the duration was less," said Walter Martins Dr. Walter Ralston Martin (September 10 1928 – June 26 1989), was an American Evangelical minister, author, and Christian apologist who founded the Christian Research Institute in 1960 as a para-church ministry specialising as a clearing-house of information in both general , industrial director for Veracel. At the end of March 2005, for example, while some areas were in the final phase of assembly and commissioning, including the fiberline, recovery boiler Recovery boiler is the part of Kraft process of pulping where chemicals for white liquor are recovered and reformed from black liquor. In the process lignin of the wood, bound in black liquor at this phase, is burned and heat generated. , causticizing, drying machine and turbogenerator, others had already entered into operation, such as the water and effluent effluent waste from an abattoir carried away in liquid form. Disposal is a major problem because of the need to avoid pollution of waterways. See aerobic effluent treatment, anaerobic effluent treatment. treatment plant, the woodyard, power boiler, and evaporation evaporation, change of a liquid into vapor at any temperature below its boiling point. For example, water, when placed in a shallow open container exposed to air, gradually disappears, evaporating at a rate that depends on the amount of surface exposed, the humidity . The construction used 40,000 metric tons of equipment and pipes and 115,000 m3 of concrete, which gives some idea of the scale of the undertaking. "In a project being carried out so fast, all areas are critical, although the most complex areas are drying, the fiberline and the boiler," said Renato Gueron. He added, however, that there were always surprises. A pleasant surprise was the drying area, which is normally very complicated, but here had a very calm construction process. Another area, the turbogenerator, caused great concern in the Aracruz Fiberline C project but did not cause any problems for Veracel. "Those areas that we thought might be very critical didn't end up being so because they received considerable attention from the start," said Carlos Pastrana, manager of the fiberline area for Veracel. One of the most difficult phases, in the opinion of Construction Site Engineer Bruno Leal LEAL. Loyal; that which belongs to the law. , was the diversion of the Jequitinhonha River The Jequitinhonha River is a river that flows mainly through the Brazilian state of Minas Gerais. Its source lies near Diamantina in the Serra do Espinhaço at an elevation of 1,200 m, after which it flows northward and then east-northeastward across the uplands. , followed by the construction of a dam, pipes, etc. "When the first water came through to the mill, we celebrated--it was very moving!" he remembers. Another difficulty was the lack of an industrial culture-i.e. qualified labor-in the region. Veracel had to train 6000 persons in various professions for the project, such as carpenters, pipefitters, welders, electricians, and operators. POSITIVE EXPECTATIONS Starting with estimated production of 340,000 metric tons of pulp in 2005, Veracel's goal is to reach 900,000 metric tons/yr. "The production curve, clearly, is very conservative, because it is a new plant, even considering that we have the experience of Aracruz and Stora Enso and that most of the suppliers are the same," said Walter Martins. In May, the plant operated for only 10 days, at 50% capacity. The same was expected to occur in June, and from then on production was expected to increase 5% per month. However, the expectation, according to according to prep. 1. As stated or indicated by; on the authority of: according to historians. 2. In keeping with: according to instructions. 3. Martins, is for much greater production. A good way to think about the increase in production is through the "learning curve." The concept is different in some companies, but at Veracel there is a long learning curve involved in maintaining daily average production equal to the company's nominal capacity for 30 consecutive days. "In our case, the average will be 2543 metric tons/day, the amount stipulated to be reached by May 2006 at the latest, 12 months after start-up," said Martins. WORKING IN HARMONY Veracel pulp has a very strong advantage-low cost production. The enviable en·vi·a·ble adj. So desirable as to arouse envy: "the enviable English quality of being able to be mute without unrest" Henry James. performance of the forests, linked to a modern and effective process, will permit pulp production at a cost lower than the lowest existing pulp mill A pulp mill is a manufacturing facility that converts wood chips or other plant fiber source into a thick fiber board which can be shipped to a paper mill for further processing. cost structure. The pulp produced in May and June, however, was considered start-up pulp and was expected be sold to customers with this classification. The pulp was expected to have greater variation than pulp from a normal process. [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Veracel's partners have an agreement for each to keep half the production--Aracruz will export its portion to clients in the United States, Europe and Asia, while Stora Enso will supply its paper mills in Europe and Asia. On August 15, Stora Enso announced that its Oulu Mill in Finland had received the first shipment of eucalyptus short-fiber pulp from Veracel. The 4000 metric tons of pulp delivered will be used for test runs. [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] In the near future, Veracel's production may increase to supply new paper mills. "The mill was planned taking into account future expansion," said Gueron. "The mill was designed to facilitate duplication of the production areas. Some key areas of infrastructure, for example, are already capable of handling a second pulp mill, such as the effluent pipes, water intake pipes, the principal electrical line, administrative buildings, control room, etc." [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Costa agreed that doubling the size of the plant would be relatively easy, but added, "The difficult thing is to double the forestry base without creating conflicts with the communities," and predicted that the expansion would not occur for at least three years. "We must wait for the mill to begin operating, and then analyze some principal points, such as personnel recruitment, the rate of retention of people in the company, etc." WHAT YOU WILL LEARN * How Aracruz and Stora Enso completed the Veracel project in record time. * Why the Veracel site required extensive infrastructure development. * Challenges faced by the construction team. * Prospects for additional construction projects at the site. ADDITIONAL RESOURCES * "Ripasa in the limelight limelight: see calcium oxide. limelight Early form of theatrical lighting. The incandescent calcium light invented by Thomas Drummond in 1816 was first employed in a theatre in 1837 and was widely used by the 1860s. again" (pulp mill expansion), by F. Saraiva, Solutions!, October 2004: To access this article, type the following Product Code in the search field on www.tappi.org: 04OCTSO44. Or call TAPPI Member Connection at 1 800 332-8686 (US); 1 800 446-9431 (Canada); +1 770 446 1400 (International). * "Latin America Latin America, the Spanish-speaking, Portuguese-speaking, and French-speaking countries (except Canada) of North America, South America, Central America, and the West Indies. sees rapid growth in tissue markets," by Jaakko Poyry Consulting, Solutions!, November 2004. Product Code: 04NOVSO60. * "Successful experiences competition highlights problem-solving, teamwork" (ABTCP ABTCP Associação Brasileira Técnica de Celulose e Papel (Portugese: Brazilian Pulp and Paper Technical Association) project competition), by R.M. Savastano, Solutions!, September 2002: Product Code: 02SEPSO52. RELATED ARTICLE: VERACEL PRINCIPAL SUPPLIERS, LISTED BY AREA * Woodyard: Metso. Other suppliers: Serpal (civil construction) and Milplan (assembly) * Cooking and washing: Andritz. Other suppliers: Paranasa (civil construction) and Montcalm (assembly) * Bleaching bleaching, process of whitening by chemicals or by exposure to sun and air, commonly applied to textiles, paper pulp, wheat flour, petroleum products, oils and fats, straw, hair, feathers, and wood. : Andritz. Other suppliers: Paranasa (civil construction) and Montcalm (assembly) * Drying and baling: Consortium Andritz-Voith-Moura Schwark (civil construction). Other suppliers: Imetame (mechanical assembly) and Estel (electric assembly) * Evaporation: Confab/US Filter. Other suppliers: Civilport (civil construction) and Irmaos Passaura (assembly) * Causticizing and lime kiln A lime kiln is a kiln used to produce quicklime by the calcination of limestone (calcium carbonate). The chemical equation for this reaction is:
* Recovery and power boilers: Kvaerner. Other suppliers: Fortes Fortes is a fairly rare family name in Spanish and Portuguese-speaking countries (Spanish pronunciation: FOR-tes, (Brazilian) Portuguese pronunciation: FOR-cheesse). Famous Fortes include:
* Turbogenerator: Mitsubishi. Other suppliers: Moura Schwark (civil construction) and MIP MIP See: Monthly income preferred security (assembly) * Electrical distribution and substation: ABB n. 1. Among weavers, yarn for the warp. Hence, Noun 1. ABB - an urban hit squad and guerrilla group of the Communist Party in the Philippines; formed in the 1980s . Other suppliers: Enind (civil construction and assembly) * Water and effluents: Consortium Centroprojekt (engineering), Setal (assembly) and Tessag (management e engineering). Paranasa (civil construction). * Non-process buildings: Sertenge * DCS (1) See also DSC. (2) Digital Cross-connect System) A network switching and grooming device used by telecom carriers. See digital cross-connect. and process simulator (1) Software that enables the execution of an application written for a different computer environment. Same as emulator. (2) Software that models the interactions of hypothetical or real-world objects or business processes. : Invensys/Andritz * Tie line: Siemens * PIMS PIMS Pacific Institute for the Mathematical Sciences PIMS Penalty Minutes (hockey) PIMS Pakistan Institute of Medical Sciences PIMS Profit Impact of Market Strategy PIMS Project Information Management System : Metso Automation * Web training: Amec * Interconnections: Jaakko Poyry (engineering and management), with principal suppliers: Degremont, Cooper, Hamon, Paranasa, Fortes, Ultratec and Imetame. RELATED ARTICLE: VERACEL AT A GLANCE The Veracel mill employs the very latest technology in pulp production, including the following: Woodyard The woodyard has a feeding system developed to receive debarked wood from the forest. There are two wood lines and the bark wastes are separated, and together with the fines generated by the chipping process are burned as biomass in the power boiler. Fiberline The fiberline features a chip feeding system for the digester di·gest·er n. 1. One that makes a digest. 2. Chemistry A vessel in which substances are softened or decomposed, usually for further processing. Noun 1. that, rather than the usual high pressure feeder feeder abbreviation for self-feeders. Used in feeding groups of animals at intervals of several days. Feed has to be dry and comminuted so that it will run down the spouts from the hopper into the troughs. , uses a pumping system. The line washing equipment and the digester (see below) are among the largest ever built. Digester The Veracel low solids digester (with selective cooking) ensures the optimization and preservation of fiber strength, contributing to greater strength of the final product. The digester capacity is 3010 metric tons/day with dimensions of 56.7 X 10.5 meters (3110 [m.sup.3]). Bleaching To guarantee the standard of fiber strength and maximum pulp bleachability, Veracel opted for a 4-stage bleaching process (ADO-EOP-D1-D2) producing pulp with 92 ISO (1) See ISO speed. (2) (International Organization for Standardization, Geneva, Switzerland, www.iso.ch) An organization that sets international standards, founded in 1946. The U.S. member body is ANSI. brightness. Drying Machine Veracel's drying machine, with a capacity of 3000 metric tons/day of dry solids, is the largest in the world--a virtual twin of one recently installed in the Jian-Ling mill in China. It is 9.3 meters wide and has a speed of 200 meters/min. The wet section consists of a double screen forming machine, followed by a press section that features a Voith shoe press. The drying section has the largest pulp drying tunnel ever installed. Evaporation Plant The Veracel evaporation plant is similar to that at Aracruz, which reaches 85% of dry solids after the water evaporation. At Veracel, the goal is to reach 80%. Recovery Boiler The Veracel recovery boiler is the largest in Brazil, with a height of around 80 meters and a capacity of 4000 metric tons/day of dry solids, with the potential to reach 4700 metric tons of dry solids/day. It will be capable of supplying practically all the mill's energy demands. Biomass Boiler The fluidized bed A fluidized bed is formed when a quantity of a solid particulate substance (usually present in a holding vessel) is forced to behave as a fluid; usually by the forced introduction of pressurised gas through the particulate medium. biomass boiler is projected to produce 90 metric tons of steam/hr. The excess energy, which should be around 30 MW when the mill is up to nominal capacity, will be sold to Eka Chemicals, a Veracel partner with a chemical plant on the mill site. Water intake The Veracel's water supply is the Jequitinhonha River, which is 5.6 km from the mill. The mill's water intake is about 1000 meters below the effluent discharge point. RELATED ARTICLE A BRIEF HISTORY OF VERACEL The Veracel project started in 1991, when Odebrecht decided to buy land to plant forests in Bahia. In 1997, the Swedish company Stora entered the business, taking a 50% stake in Veracel. The next year, Stora merged with Enso (from Finland), creating Stora Enso, which is now based in Helsinki, Finland. In June 2000, Veracel gained a new shareholder--Aracruz--in a deal that gave both them and Stora Enso a 45% stake in Veracel, while Odebrecht kept 10%. In January 2003, Odebrecht left the partnership, leaving Aracruz and Stora Enso each with half of Veracel. In May 2003, the partners decided to start construction of the pulp plant. Veracel began operations with two important certifications in the forestry area: ISO 14000 and Cerflor. THE ROLE OF FORESTS IN VERACEL Veracel has a total forested area of more than 80,000 hectares, including 3000 hectares of land rented out and 10,000 hectares planted. In addition, within the Atlantic Forest Program, there is a legal reserve of more than 31,000 hectares, 16,000 hectares for permanent preservation, 6000 hectares that make up the Veracruz Station, and 25,000 hectares of surplus reserves. Working with engineers and other professionals, Veracel has forestry productivity of 51 [m.sup.3]/ha/year. "It is the highest average in Brazil," said Forestry Director Antonio Sergio Alipio. Given this level of forestry productivity and projections for the pulp mill, Veracel will demand around 70,000 hectares of its own eucalyptus forests and 23,000 hectares of partner plantations, for a total of 93,000 hectares. Veracel's plantations use eucalyptus clones obtained from crossing the species Eucalyptus grandis Eucalyptus grandis, Flooded gum, Rose gum, is a medium to tall tree with smooth bark, rough at the base fibrous or flaky, grey to grey-brown. Leaves are stalked, lanceolate to broad lanceolate, discolorous, to 15 x 3 cm, glossy dark green. and Eucalyptus urophylla. The seedlings are produced in a 49,000 [m.sup.2] nursery in Eunapolis. The nursery is capable of producing up to 23 million seedlings per year. Planting is done based on the concept of mosaics, in which the areas of eucalyptus are interlinked with the Atlantic Forest preservation areas. Cutting is done with mechanical harvesters that cut the trunks into debarked 6-meter lengths. LUCIANA PERECIN AND RENATA MERCANTE, EDITORIAL STAFF, O PAPEL MAGAZINE ABOUT THE AUTHOR Luciana Perecin (left) and Renata Mercante are editors with O Papel magazine, the official publication of ABTCP, the Brazilian technical association for the pulp and paper industry The global pulp and paper industry is dominated by North American (United States, Canada), northern European (Finland, Sweden) and East Asian countries (such as Japan). Australasia and Latin America also have significant pulp and paper industries. . The photo was taken on top of Veracel's recovery boiler. To contact O Papel, send email to Patricia Capo, editor in chief: patriciac@abtcp.org.br |
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